jQuery UI 1.10 Beta

The first beta release for jQuery UI 1.10 is out, barely more than two months after the 1.9 release. Naturally, we’ve focused on specific widgets for this release, along with a usual barrage of bug fixes.

The big changes:

Dialog API redesign and a ton of accessibility updates: This was our main goal for this release. Dialog is now easier to use (fewer (useless) options), avoids a ton of issues thanks for a new approach to stacking and a lot more accessible. When you press a button to open a dialog, then close that dialog, focus will move back to that opening button. Full keyboard control is therefore much easier. Focus handling inside the dialog also got better. Together this makes dialog much more usable in combination with screenreaders. And you get all that while the API stayed pretty much the same.

Just upgraded development environment to this beta to try and resolve a problem with 1.9.x modal dialog – occasional blocking of a textarea within a modal dialog. (both IE9 & Chrome)
No such problem with the beta so far, so its looking very promising. Thanks guys, keep up the good work, much appreciated.